Differences of Desperation

In John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, California was besieged by tenant farmers like Tom Joad, desperate for work.
In the modern version being played out today on the streets of Los Angeles and almost every other major city in the state, tens of thousands of the homeless are desperate for shelter, services and of course, drugs. Lots and lots of drugs.

My father's childhood was actually a lot like the Grapes of Wrath, except it was going to Michigan to pick cherries then ending up the boot-heel sharecropping cotton. Yes people fell into addiction and dispair, yet there was a yearning for work and betterment instead of what seems to be an endless nihilistic spiral.